Anyone who believes in conspiracy theories the Malaysian authorities till date have not released the entire passenger manifest or disclosed why all the crew members under house arrest and not allowed to speak to the media.

Investigations into the flight simulator taken from the missing pilot's home showed a software for five practice runways, including one belonging to the United States, Berita Harian reported today.

"Among the software we checked so far is the Male International Airport in Maldives, three airports in India and SRI Lanka, and one belonging to the US military base in Diego Garcia. All have a runway length of 1,000 metres," a source told the Malay daily.

Police seized the flight simulator from pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's house last Saturday before reassembling it at the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman, where experts were conducting checks.

After 10 days of searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, investigators have now conducting extensive background checks on the 239 people on board the plane, including the pilots, crew and passengers.

The US previously rejected claims that the plane could have landed at their base on the atoll in the central Indian Ocean, which is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

The source said investigations were being conducted by the police together with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to obtain any clues in the search for MH370.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that the plane could have landed at an airport where control might have been lax, or that it landed on sea, hills or an open space.

Police have opened investigation papers on March 8 into the crew and passengers as well as the ground staff who may have come into contact with the aircraft.

They searched the homes of Zaharie and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid shortly after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced on Saturday that the plane had been deliberately diverted off course.

Although he stopped short of calling it a hijacking, Najib said the fact that MH370 had turned back and headed towards the west was in line with the deliberate actions of someone on the plane.
Inspector-General of Police Tan SRI Khalid Abu Bakar said investigations would cover all angles.

Putrajaya also appealed to the public not to make any assumptions based on police investigations.

The search and rescue mission for MH370 has entered a new phase with its areas being expanded to the Northern Corridor, covering Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan until the north of Thailand and to the Southern Corridor – from Indonesia toward the south of the Indian Ocean.

MH370, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew members, vanished from the radar about an hour into after taking off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing. – March 18, 2014.

It's accepted that the tracking systems were turned off, why this was done and who by is still a mystery. Clearly the plane was also redirected for reasons unknown. I think that who ever redirected the plane did it without the intention to crash it. A complete lack of any organisation taking responsibility suggests this wasn't terrorism. Terrorists wouldn't be bothered with removing the tracking systems as they'd want everyone to know the plane crashed if that was their ultimate intention. The most likely people to know how to turn off the navigation systems were the pilots.

Simply I think the pilots have turned the navigation systems off. Clearly this would have been done to take the plane to a different location. However I don't think crashing was their intention and they had a destination in mind. Unfortunately something unplanned has happened to the plane, maybe the pilots weren't skilled enough to fly without the navigation system. This has now made the plane extremely hard to find.

I also think the official investigators don't have the experience in dealing with such a case. So their seemingly sporadic approach and inability to come up with answers quickly (due to the nature of the incident) is only serving to fuel speculation and rumours.

Flight simulators are very advanced these days. So much so you can actually use the hours on a simulator towards gaining your flying license. The pilots may have had them to use as training aids for when approaching airports they aren't completely familiar with, which their employer may fly to. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the pilots to add variation, in the form of other airports, into their practices to help build up experience, so having the simulators at their houses can easily be made into something far more than it actually is. We all want to be racing drivers so we have racing driver games on our games consoles. Why wouldn't a pilot do the same.

Its strange why there were no calls from the passengers, even on 9/11 calls were made an there is no way they could have expected their ultimate fate.

So lets say an attempted hijacking, no calls and no attempts to overpower a human rogue element - I don't believe people in this situation would sit calm these days, it would be full out attack to the threat after 9/11 and surely comms would have been attempted. Would the other members of the crew have been aware of a plane diverting or climbing to 45,000ft unless the pilots lied about why this action was being taken?

It was still alive and tracked or at least pinging for 5-6hours after its last contact and data was sent to Rolls Royce so its not like a catastrophic failure occurred.

My far-fetched theory is that the plane was hijacked, taken up to a higher altitude where the air to the passengers was turned off getting rid of them quietly, the plane was then taken somewhere where it is being prepared to be used in an attack.

Its strange why there were no calls from the passengers, even on 9/11 calls were made an there is no way they could have expected their ultimate fate.

So lets say an attempted hijacking, no calls and no attempts to overpower a human rogue element - I don't believe people in this situation would sit calm these days, it would be full out attack to the threat after 9/11 and surely comms would have been attempted. Would the other members of the crew have been aware of a plane diverting or climbing to 45,000ft unless the pilots lied about why this action was being taken?

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The difference between this and the 9/11 planes is the 9/11 planes were over land with good mobile phone coverage. The malaysia plane was over mid ocean with no coverage.

If the plane was hijacked by the pilots why would any other crew or passengers question how the plane was being flown? Over the ocean no one else but the pilots would know which direction the plane was heading in with no land references. There would be no cause for alarm.

The news about this missing plane has been plastered all over world... surely that's got some monetary value or a way to get the message across. I am really anxious, so I believe most of us, to find out exactly what has happened and that too first hand from the pilots or the passengers.

The malaysian authorities really aren't helping the situation. Their desire to keep everyone continually updated means they're not being consistent and constantly changing their story. First it didn't change direction, then it did, now it didn't again. No wonder the relatives are upset. The authorities need to learn to hold back until the have concrete evidence to back up their claims before making them.

I am in a way relieved as well as I always, when given choice, choose a 777 flight over others given its safety record so hoping that the aircraft safety was never compromised, which from the sounds of it didn't

I enjoyed the documentary on the 747, especially the part where the test pilot took the CEO of the engine manufacturer up for a flight and deliberately blew two of the engines so they would hurry up with the investigation with the engine fault.